The Resistance

When George Bush was president and was faced with accusations about warrantless wiretapping, he was faced with a sick amount of resistance and outcry. I remember this. I was one of them. On that and many other issues, we were out in the street protesting. And we changed things. Maybe not directly, but we affected decisions, we made our leaders think about what they were doing. Resistance is super good for our Democracy. It’s a very vital check on the power of our government.

Which is why I was so upset when that resistance dried up once Barack Obama took over the white house. He took Bush policies like domestic spying, and the drone wars, and others.. and ramped them up 10 fold. And yet, not many people complained. In fact, we all rallied behind him and elected him for a second term.

But now it’s clear that The Resistance is back with a vengeance. And I’m pretty happy to see that. I think it’s important for us to pay attention to the minutia of politics. It’s important for us to care who leads the Interior Department (here’s an old post of mine about Obamas). I encourage all of you to push back on our new president. I think we should push back on all presidents when they do things we disagree with.

Right now I think a huge amount of our pushback is not coming from the right place. I think we are kind of like sheep, following the Democratic/Liberal media machine in just resisting the Donald on general principal. This, I think, is wrong. Very wrong. What I want to see is people getting upset about specific issues. Right now, that’s hardly how it is. We have blanket hatred of the president.

Take for example his order regarding the TPP. The TPP was a really, really bad deal for non oligarchs. We all (hopefully) know this by now. The Donald put an axe into it yesterday and everyone started saying stuff along the lines of “Oh, well that was dead already, it’s not significant that he signed that order.”. Nope, what if he signed an order saying he wanted to be part of it instead? We are giving the man hate 100%. I’m not sure that’s the right way to do this. I don’t think we can sustain it either.

Another example is his abortion related order yesterday. This is something that isn’t specific to Donald Trump. This bounces back and forth with every administration when they change parties:

The policy has been enforced off and on since it first took effect in 1985. Democratic administrations have traditionally rescinded the policy, while Republican administrations have reinstated it.
…
Even during the Obama years, US law banned direct funding for abortion services.

Is it a big deal? Sorry, no it’s not. Is it because DT is evil? Again, no. Any Republican president would have done the same thing.

In my opinion we need to pay attention to whats going on and stay focused. When we see things we disagree with we should stand up and fight like crazy but lets not simply be one mindless group of protesters. Lets choose our battles carefully.